Interview of Samuel M. Young, 2009

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Interview with
Pastor Samuel Mason Young, Sr.
Regarding David Johnson Young and the
D. J. Young Publishing Company
Interviewer: Ladrian P. Brown, M.D.
Date: August 27, 2009
Sister Brown: It’s August 27, 2009 and we’re here at Young Memorial Church of God in Christ. Our project here today is to find, and dig, and establish a little bit of the history of the Church of God in Christ. We’re here sitting with Elder Samuel Mason Young, Sr., who is a grandson of one of the Church of God in Christ’s founders, Overseer David Johnson Young. He’s going to talk to us about the old publishing house, about the ministry of D. J. Young, and we’re going to learn about their historical significance. Elder Samuel Young, will you start with who you are in relation to D. J. Young and just give us a little history about your family.
Pastor Young: OK. I’m Sammy Young, and I answer to a bunch of hats, grandpa, uncle, elder, pastor, you name it. I am the grandson of D. J. Young and I am the son of his oldest son, Harold. Harold had nine kids, and I am the middle child. I was born in ‘32. Grandpa died before I was born. He died in ’27, April ‘2, and those things I know about him were always just handed down to me. Being a chauffeur to the pastor, dad… Well Dad and Mother did a lot of entertaining. So, very often I would have to go and pick up the Saints, bring them and sometimes take them home after they had been visiting with my parents. In the latter year or so, it became even much more apparent because dad, his health had gone bad, and it kinda appeared that, in due time, he would pass. We never expected it though. But the friends, church members here, there and elsewhere would tell me about my grandpa, as he was called, and that’s where my knowledge basically came from.
The kids of D. J. didn’t do a lot of talking about him. I guess this is because, when you are a part of the family you have a tendency to down play stuff, whereas if you were on the outside looking in, it would be more, say, more important. But because we were who we were, we were just a bunch of kids, you know. And we were in the church and we stayed in the church, except for a few experiences where you went away to school or went to the military or something like that, and other than that this is home.
Sister Brown: D. J. Young’s name shows up in many books. We know that he was important with the founding of the Church of God in Christ. We know that he was part of that wonderful Holiness Movement that led to the Azusa Street Revival and other denominations that came out of the Azusa Street Revival, like the Church of God in Christ. Can you share with us about some of the specific things that D. J. Young contributed to the world and Christendom?
Pastor Young: Yeah, going back to the beginning of the situation, D. J. was a member of the AME Zion Church and around 1895, he met up with the late Bishop Charles Harrison Mason. When preachers get together they talk about various things, and there was a movement of sanctification going on about that time, and all over the world, quite frankly. But anyway, as they came together, D. J. was going back to Tennessee from having served in Chicago, Illinois, pastoring there. He had met a group of people called the Burning Bush and they were a sanctified movement. He went to their college there in Chicago, and learned about sanctification. So as he came back he was preaching sanctification, and the similar interests between Bishop Mason and him caused them to be buddies. As they continued to talk and exchange various points of view, he left the AME Church and hooked up with the, well, independent. And so he went on over to serve with Mason under… can’t recall his name right this second but I’ll get it though. And as a result they became bosom buddies and he began to serve with him, with that church. After a while the word about the Holy Ghost falling at Azusa stirred interest all over the world. Actually, the movement started up in Topeka, Kansas, with a sanctification movement. The Methodist school up there had an instructor and he was very fervent in his studies, or delivery to the students for their studies, and he began to talk to them. Now, though they were in Kansas, he was a racist type… On good days, when the weather was [good], they let him set outside, outdoors, outside the window and he learned that way. When school was over he left there and went to California. His name was Seymour. And Azusa Street came out of that fervency that he had and the meeting ran for a couple years, I believe. But anyway, the word spread all over the place, the pouring out of the Holy Ghost in Azusa. The head of the church that D. J. had affiliated with sent him, D. J., Mason and Jeter, out to go and find out about this thing going on out there in California. So they left. D. J. and Mason received the Baptism with the Holy Ghost and they came back from there teaching it. Jeter did not. And then, when they reported to the congregation what had occurred… C. P. Jones, he was the head of the church and he was the one that sent them, called a meeting or a convention of the group. And they came and they discussed it. C. P. Jones did not receive the report. He pushed it out, no, no, no. When the pressure came on, Jeter back-peddled and denied, kind of a Judas effect. I don’t know nothing else about it.
They were excommunicated by the church and as a result they called a convention. A lot of other brothers had begun to preach sanctification and the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, so they called a meeting the following month over in Memphis, TN. They went there, and out of that meeting came the Church of God in Christ. They did not have a leader but they asked God for a leader in prayer and, after prayer, D. J. stood up. and, before I say this part let me say this: D. J. was very much a person that people liked. He was kind of a Saul: tall, handsome, strong, forceful in what he was saying, and people just loved him. This is an expression I got from the people that told me about him. They said when you met D. J., ‘to meet him was to love him.’ It was just like meeting someone you had known all the time. Very much pleasant, very down to earth, etc., an educated man but wonderful to be with. So as a result they would become friends and be friends forever. Now, with his outgoing personality, he was preferred as a leader, than anyone else. So when it came time to pick the leader, they were saying D. J. But then after the prayer session, and I cannot tell you how long they prayed, D. J. got up and said the Lord has given us Charley (as they would call each other by their first name, or Brother Charley) the Lord had given them Charles Harrison Mason to be their Head, or their Chief Overseer. As a result he refused to accept the vote for himself. He said no. the Lord is doing it, and as a young organization they were very subject to the Lord. This power within them, this burning desire to serve, was burning very noticeable and as a result they accepted the interpretation of the tongues that D. J. had spoken and made him, meaning Charles Harrison Mason, the Chief Overseer of the Church of God in Christ. From there D. J. was an evangelist and he had served in a number of states: Texas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Chicago, Illinois, and after a period… the overseer of Western Missouri, Bishop Barker, Overseer Barker as they used to call him then, wrote D. J. who was pastoring in Texas and serving in Texas, and told him, here we have some area up here that does not have any churches. It’s just a virgin territory and ripe for you. And he just took right off. He resigned his bishopric, his overseership, of Texas, which was quite normal with him. He would build up a group, and once he got that group established he would leave that area in the hands of others and move to another area and build it up. And so he came to Kansas on Bishop Barker’s invitation or suggestion. And when he arrived he found out there was, I believe it was, thirty saints that lived in Kansas that went all the way to Missouri to church. And he took that group and started the Church of God in Christ on the Kansas side. And from that point ‘til the time of his death he established like 27, 28 churches in Kansas; and that included all the main cities, Wichita, Topeka, Atchison… Lawrence, but it was 27 churches. And they sprang out from the one church at 4th & Oakland.
Sister Brown: And what was the name of that church?
Pastor Young: It was the Church of God in Christ as such. And that’s what they used to call them all. They did not have the identity, as we say, Young Memorial now. That phrase had not come into existence yet, so they would refer to it as the Saints on Oakland, and very often they would say it that way, or they would call it the church at 409 Oakland. Later, after D. J. died, the church’s name, to take on an identification name, was called Saint’s Home Church of God in Christ. And then later on, after a number of years, it never really caught on. It was a term that was legally there but the people didn’t really accept it. Then, later on, the people, the elders, decided let’s call it Young Memorial in honor of the Young’s, D. J., Harold, and Melvin and so that’s when Young Memorial Church of God in Christ came to me.
Sister Brown: D. J. Young is, perhaps, most known for his publishing within the Church of God in Christ. Can you tell us about that and how it played a significant role in the building of the Church of God in Christ?
Pastor Young: Sure. D. J. was a writer in the AME Zion Church. He was the publisher of the Zion Star. That was the church paper, and it was the equivalent of what we call The Whole Truth paper. Every church has a paper. In that particular group, the Zion group, it was called the Zion Star. And he published that for their group. And it went everywhere. There was also this thing, he was an educator. He got his degrees from Morehouse and… Brainerd. He had gotten his education through those institutions and he encouraged all the preachers to go to school and educate yourself.
I can see the difference between his ministry and C. H. Mason’s ministry in that Mason had the philosophy we’ll put a church on every corner. Well, D. J.’s ministry, or preferences, were, lets have one in each town. We can build up one to be a large church, self sustaining. Now that influence came from the AME Church or the Methodist movement. As they would go different places and establish a church, that would be the church for the area and if it grew that was because the population grew. Here in the city, we have two or three Methodist churches. At one time, there was only one. And so this was the difference in the philosophy of D. J. and Mason. I kinda like the idea of having them on every corner, in one sense. If D. J. had become the head of the church that would’ve been a thing very noted, one church in Kansas City, Kansas, one church in Kansas City, Missouri, one church in Topeka, one church here and there and elsewhere. And still, it’s good to let the churches grow. Sometimes a little competition is good.
Now, during this time frame, by him being a writer, when he came to the Church of God in Christ, he just automatically started writing, and they didn’t have a paper, so he started The Whole Truth paper. He was the first editor. He sat down and he received articles from all over the brotherhood of what was going on here and there and elsewhere. By putting it in the paper and sending it throughout the country, everybody got to share in it. With his knowledge of printing, and his degree, and his past associations, he knew that we needed a Sunday School. And he pushed, ‘let’s have a Sunday School.’ Well they didn’t have any literature so he became the one, ‘let’s get the literature together.’ So, he got the literature going.
He did not write the literature, per se. He edited it. What happened is he got his information from the international church Sunday school lessons, and then would edit it so that it would fit the doctrine of the Church of God in Christ, which is a tremendous job right there because when you have to go through every word of an article to make sure it agrees with the whole discipline, that’s quite a bit of work right there, but it was also helpful because with a dozen or so other writers helping you to put an article together or paper together, you can get poems or songs or other inspirations. Yet, I do know that we sometimes get the inspiration and we can write a message and put dozens of songs in and several poems, and what have you, as God should give us grace, but then if you have to sit down and do that for every Sunday, its good sometimes if somebody can help you just a little bit, so God gave him the help. He just adopted the international lessons for the Sunday School literature and edited it to fit the doctrine of the Church of God in Christ. It worked out pretty good.
Ladrian Brown: And the Sunday School literature was produced in 1916?
Pastor Young: Yes, he started publishing it here at his house, 1958 North 6th Street. And it was sent to the various locations from there for years.
Sister Brown: And who did the printing?
Pastor Young: At that time it was a white printer. The guy’s name was Lucas. And he printed the materials and would bring the books to the house. And they would be mailed from there. They had already been edited. Now, the printing of the literature was AFTER it was edited. They fell into various categories. You had your card class material, your primary, intermediate, your junior, and your seniors, etc. Each one of those had been written so that it could appeal and make it easier for each age group to understand. It made it quite effective.
D. J. did die but his primary helper was his wife, and she was helping him all along, from the get go, as they would say. When he died she just kept the work going, and her kids Harold, Melvin, Rose, Valleda, and Russell.
Sister Brown: And Ceolya?
Pastor Young: No, Ceolya was the baby girl and she didn’t really get into the writing. She was born just before they came here from Texas. The church here in Kansas was established in ’16, and so they had just got here. She was a toddler at best. The most I remember about Ceolya, or Aunt Ceolya, was that my Grandpa would come in, he would take his coat off and hang it on the back of his chair, or either he would be sitting at the chair and he would always keep gum drops, lemon gum drops, in his pocket. She would go and take the gum drops and then give the other kids some. She could always get away with it so they all had gum drops through Ceolya, the baby girl. She was just a little bit, too young to do any of the editing.
Now all the grandkids were used in the delivery of the Sunday School books. The oldest, the ones that were saved, sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost, and life proven, steps proved, were allowed to help with some editing as they aged and got into their late twenties, mid twenties or thereabout, but then all the kids, including myself, we learned how to go and wrap the books up and tie the books up in a package and put on a label, put the glue on the back of the label and stick the label on the package. After we got finished we had to separate all these different packages by states, go to the Post Office department, and bag it up and take it up to the Post Office for them and so the youngest grandchild could be only three, or four or five years old, and they would take that batch over there and put it in that pile... And that’s how it was done, so we all had a play in getting some of the work out. I’ll say it was all complimentary.
Thank you. Thank you was what you got paid. It was fun. The publishing house had just been completed as a new building the year that she [Madame Priscilla Young] died. Now how long it had been actually standing there, cause she was sick for quite a while before she went into the hospital, I’m not really sure. But it was very interesting. Here we had a building that could handle a lot of space and support the equipment that would be needed but we were not trained as printers. The task fell to the old folks as they said then, Dad, Aunt Rose… You gotta get some printing material to print these books. So they went to a number of establishments that sold printing equipment and they would go in and say this is what we want to do. Because this was a time when, well, there were not many rich black folks around and when they went to these places, they were very often snubbed. They just treated them like they were not even there and if they talked to them at all they would talk down to them. But then they went to one place and this man, the salesman, was extremely polite. Here were three or four people that wanted to print a book and he told them how it could be done and what they needed to get it done. And the idea of printing it themselves, or her printing it, came into being because one of her son-in-laws said Momma, you’ve got some sons, grandsons, and they’ll be needing a job, and if you built a place you could hire them and train them and they’ll always have a job and you would always have somebody to get your work out. That’s the way it came into the building. Incidentally, Uncle Melvin was a carpenter by trade and he’s the one they contracted to build the building.
Sister Brown: And who was Uncle Melvin to D. J.?
Pastor Young: That’s his son, the second child of D. J., second oldest child.
Sister Brown: What role did he play in the publishing house and his other children as well?
Pastor Young: Melvin, that’s Uncle Melvin, was also an editor and he was a preacher. And Harold was a preacher. They pastored the churches after their Dad died, Grandpa died. They had to do some of everything. When you’re the boss, it doesn’t mean you just sit and direct, it means that you just get in there and get it done. They would do everything that had to be done including sweep the floor if it was necessary. They would fill books, fill orders as they would say, and wrap, and tie, and ship the mail.
The logic was that, and this was a phrase that was often used, “the rich Youngs,” but people didn’t know that we weren’t rich. You know, when you work for yourself you don’t always get rich. But to do what had to be done you had to take the money and invest it. When Mr. Lucas was printing the Sunday School books, she didn’t spend all her money and just throw it away but then she handled it very wisely, Mother D. J. Young, Big Mama. She handled her money very wisely. When the time came, she had put money away to buy the presses, the cutters, the trimmers, the folders, the stitchers, and all that stuff that needed to be had to put a book together. And this gentleman that was so very kind to inform her of what she needed was the one who got the contract. As the Lord would have it, she bought the presses and what not. This was good equipment - very, very good equipment. She bought the equipment and she paid cash for it. Suddenly, every man that had a business was running to do business cause they thought we had some money, but before, they had down-played her, or the family, because she was black. So there was no lot of money, but it was just spent wisely. Very often the kids would go do publishing and get the books out. When we were little, ten, fifteen years old, you’re running around wrapping the books, you’d be working hard, but your treat at the end of the week was probably going to be a dime, and a dime wasn’t very much then and it’s still not. But you were glad to get the dime because you were a youngster. Some of the older ones, they didn’t get paid at all. This was just your job. You had to do it, just like cleaning the house. You had to clean, everybody cleans.
J. O. Patterson came in… I have Sunday School literature that was printed in 1973. Bishop Jones had come from the national and asked them would they give the equipment to the church. It was an absolute no. The reason for it is because every year the publishing shop, or every quarter, made a report like all the other auxiliaries of the church. YPWW, Sunday School department, you name it, they reported to the national work. Well the Sunday School literature department, it made its reports also. I don’t know why they thought the Young’s were rich, but that attitude carried through.
Sister Brown: Thank you Pastor Young for sharing with us. Now as we wrap up, what is your take on the publishing house…, the significance of the D. J. Young Publishing Company in relation to the Church of God in Christ and also in Kansas City, and last of all, to the Young family?
Pastor Young: It hurt me to see the printing shop close down. I offered to run the shop as a job printing. Which meant all the big presses would no longer be of any great value… The big presses would print a page as large as the average newspaper when you take the full sheets, which is also the back page. This was the size of the books as they went through there. They would print on both sides, and then the folder would fold it in such a way until it would come out to the small size, of like nine by six, I think it was. We had to have something to do with that equipment. In one sense it was the demise of the old folks, meaning Aunt Rose, Uncle Melvin, Russell lived in California so he wasn’t totally affected, but those that lived here… when you get in the habit of going to work every day and sometimes you got your full check paid and sometimes you didn’t… What you didn’t get this week, wasn’t going to come next week. It was just short and you had to bear with it. As the kids grew older, they started accepting jobs outside of the publishing house. So you had some that started teaching school, and such like. In the evening, after they went to their regular job, they would come over to the printing shop and do their job there. So it had a dampening effect. It killed people’s ego. Some of the children that weren’t saved, I don’t doubt that they had a bad image in their mind about what had transpired. You’ve been taught this game, even though you’re not saved, you’ve been taught Biblically all your life, and one of the things you do is you treat others as you want to be treated. Then when you see this happen and your basic livelihood is just taken, totally disregarded, your feelings…, it had a bad affect on them. It did have an affect on them.
With Aunt Rose and Uncle Melvin, I know that in one sense they felt a relief, but by the same token, if you have nothing to do, you die. Now that’s a proven fact. People retire, and they go home and sit down thinking they’re going to enjoy it and soon they dwindle away to nothing. This was the same effect here at the printing shop. The old folks said hey, suddenly I have no place to go, I’m not wanted. Re-establishing yourself when you’re seventy years old, it’s more than a notion. And then the community here suddenly is without. Where they had been able to come in and leave something to be printed and come back and get it and have it exactly as they wanted it. With the printing, the printer’s union has a saying ‘follow copy out the window.’ This is your copy, this is the way they want it, so you give it to them just like they say they want it. If it’s necessary to proof it two or three times, let them come and examine it and edit it and make sure, then this is fine, but you’re giving them exactly what they want. And for these people who had been getting exactly whatever they wanted done and suddenly it’s not there anymore, it hurt the community. It had a disastrous effect.
‘Now take this shop here and ship it to Memphis.’ Well, suddenly Memphis has a new shop but then you don’t have anyone who knows what’s going on, the internal workings of the shop that made it move. Now you have to take a new crew, and teach them. It’s more to it than just collecting a dollar. When the printing shop was functioning under D. J. Young Publishing, the overseas churches received their Sunday School literature without charge. They went to Africa, and wherever else. I do not know if the national considered or continued that policy. I can’t answer that.
It was a need and we were going to provide for this need. Bishop Mason told them, don’t worry about it, I know what you all are doing, and you’re making your reports and you’re helping the church, so just go ahead on. But that only lasted a certain length of time and gradually it became the old game of ‘he got too much, give me some.’ And that’s not being fair to the person who’s doing it, nor really even to the person who wants it. There were individuals who represented the church that were demanding, and where there influence went, we did not know. They would call and say this is what we want, give it to us or we’ll take it, and they did. If they say they’re representing the church but Bishop Mason was saying something different… so the head of the church is not condoning what they are doing, and eventually it went like they, rather than what Bishop Mason, was saying.
*Edited and Transcribed by Ladrian P. Brown, MD
*Editorial Assistant - Eliana Williams
*Video recording by Elder Jerry Ramsey

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Interview with
Pastor Samuel Mason Young, Sr.
Regarding David Johnson Young and the
D. J. Young Publishing Company
Interviewer: Ladrian P. Brown, M.D.
Date: August 27, 2009
Sister Brown: It’s August 27, 2009 and we’re here at Young Memorial Church of God in Christ. Our project here today is to find, and dig, and establish a little bit of the history of the Church of God in Christ. We’re here sitting with Elder Samuel Mason Young, Sr., who is a grandson of one of the Church of God in Christ’s founders, Overseer David Johnson Young. He’s going to talk to us about the old publishing house, about the ministry of D. J. Young, and we’re going to learn about their historical significance. Elder Samuel Young, will you start with who you are in relation to D. J. Young and just give us a little history about your family.
Pastor Young: OK. I’m Sammy Young, and I answer to a bunch of hats, grandpa, uncle, elder, pastor, you name it. I am the grandson of D. J. Young and I am the son of his oldest son, Harold. Harold had nine kids, and I am the middle child. I was born in ‘32. Grandpa died before I was born. He died in ’27, April ‘2, and those things I know about him were always just handed down to me. Being a chauffeur to the pastor, dad… Well Dad and Mother did a lot of entertaining. So, very often I would have to go and pick up the Saints, bring them and sometimes take them home after they had been visiting with my parents. In the latter year or so, it became even much more apparent because dad, his health had gone bad, and it kinda appeared that, in due time, he would pass. We never expected it though. But the friends, church members here, there and elsewhere would tell me about my grandpa, as he was called, and that’s where my knowledge basically came from.
The kids of D. J. didn’t do a lot of talking about him. I guess this is because, when you are a part of the family you have a tendency to down play stuff, whereas if you were on the outside looking in, it would be more, say, more important. But because we were who we were, we were just a bunch of kids, you know. And we were in the church and we stayed in the church, except for a few experiences where you went away to school or went to the military or something like that, and other than that this is home.
Sister Brown: D. J. Young’s name shows up in many books. We know that he was important with the founding of the Church of God in Christ. We know that he was part of that wonderful Holiness Movement that led to the Azusa Street Revival and other denominations that came out of the Azusa Street Revival, like the Church of God in Christ. Can you share with us about some of the specific things that D. J. Young contributed to the world and Christendom?
Pastor Young: Yeah, going back to the beginning of the situation, D. J. was a member of the AME Zion Church and around 1895, he met up with the late Bishop Charles Harrison Mason. When preachers get together they talk about various things, and there was a movement of sanctification going on about that time, and all over the world, quite frankly. But anyway, as they came together, D. J. was going back to Tennessee from having served in Chicago, Illinois, pastoring there. He had met a group of people called the Burning Bush and they were a sanctified movement. He went to their college there in Chicago, and learned about sanctification. So as he came back he was preaching sanctification, and the similar interests between Bishop Mason and him caused them to be buddies. As they continued to talk and exchange various points of view, he left the AME Church and hooked up with the, well, independent. And so he went on over to serve with Mason under… can’t recall his name right this second but I’ll get it though. And as a result they became bosom buddies and he began to serve with him, with that church. After a while the word about the Holy Ghost falling at Azusa stirred interest all over the world. Actually, the movement started up in Topeka, Kansas, with a sanctification movement. The Methodist school up there had an instructor and he was very fervent in his studies, or delivery to the students for their studies, and he began to talk to them. Now, though they were in Kansas, he was a racist type… On good days, when the weather was [good], they let him set outside, outdoors, outside the window and he learned that way. When school was over he left there and went to California. His name was Seymour. And Azusa Street came out of that fervency that he had and the meeting ran for a couple years, I believe. But anyway, the word spread all over the place, the pouring out of the Holy Ghost in Azusa. The head of the church that D. J. had affiliated with sent him, D. J., Mason and Jeter, out to go and find out about this thing going on out there in California. So they left. D. J. and Mason received the Baptism with the Holy Ghost and they came back from there teaching it. Jeter did not. And then, when they reported to the congregation what had occurred… C. P. Jones, he was the head of the church and he was the one that sent them, called a meeting or a convention of the group. And they came and they discussed it. C. P. Jones did not receive the report. He pushed it out, no, no, no. When the pressure came on, Jeter back-peddled and denied, kind of a Judas effect. I don’t know nothing else about it.
They were excommunicated by the church and as a result they called a convention. A lot of other brothers had begun to preach sanctification and the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, so they called a meeting the following month over in Memphis, TN. They went there, and out of that meeting came the Church of God in Christ. They did not have a leader but they asked God for a leader in prayer and, after prayer, D. J. stood up. and, before I say this part let me say this: D. J. was very much a person that people liked. He was kind of a Saul: tall, handsome, strong, forceful in what he was saying, and people just loved him. This is an expression I got from the people that told me about him. They said when you met D. J., ‘to meet him was to love him.’ It was just like meeting someone you had known all the time. Very much pleasant, very down to earth, etc., an educated man but wonderful to be with. So as a result they would become friends and be friends forever. Now, with his outgoing personality, he was preferred as a leader, than anyone else. So when it came time to pick the leader, they were saying D. J. But then after the prayer session, and I cannot tell you how long they prayed, D. J. got up and said the Lord has given us Charley (as they would call each other by their first name, or Brother Charley) the Lord had given them Charles Harrison Mason to be their Head, or their Chief Overseer. As a result he refused to accept the vote for himself. He said no. the Lord is doing it, and as a young organization they were very subject to the Lord. This power within them, this burning desire to serve, was burning very noticeable and as a result they accepted the interpretation of the tongues that D. J. had spoken and made him, meaning Charles Harrison Mason, the Chief Overseer of the Church of God in Christ. From there D. J. was an evangelist and he had served in a number of states: Texas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Chicago, Illinois, and after a period… the overseer of Western Missouri, Bishop Barker, Overseer Barker as they used to call him then, wrote D. J. who was pastoring in Texas and serving in Texas, and told him, here we have some area up here that does not have any churches. It’s just a virgin territory and ripe for you. And he just took right off. He resigned his bishopric, his overseership, of Texas, which was quite normal with him. He would build up a group, and once he got that group established he would leave that area in the hands of others and move to another area and build it up. And so he came to Kansas on Bishop Barker’s invitation or suggestion. And when he arrived he found out there was, I believe it was, thirty saints that lived in Kansas that went all the way to Missouri to church. And he took that group and started the Church of God in Christ on the Kansas side. And from that point ‘til the time of his death he established like 27, 28 churches in Kansas; and that included all the main cities, Wichita, Topeka, Atchison… Lawrence, but it was 27 churches. And they sprang out from the one church at 4th & Oakland.
Sister Brown: And what was the name of that church?
Pastor Young: It was the Church of God in Christ as such. And that’s what they used to call them all. They did not have the identity, as we say, Young Memorial now. That phrase had not come into existence yet, so they would refer to it as the Saints on Oakland, and very often they would say it that way, or they would call it the church at 409 Oakland. Later, after D. J. died, the church’s name, to take on an identification name, was called Saint’s Home Church of God in Christ. And then later on, after a number of years, it never really caught on. It was a term that was legally there but the people didn’t really accept it. Then, later on, the people, the elders, decided let’s call it Young Memorial in honor of the Young’s, D. J., Harold, and Melvin and so that’s when Young Memorial Church of God in Christ came to me.
Sister Brown: D. J. Young is, perhaps, most known for his publishing within the Church of God in Christ. Can you tell us about that and how it played a significant role in the building of the Church of God in Christ?
Pastor Young: Sure. D. J. was a writer in the AME Zion Church. He was the publisher of the Zion Star. That was the church paper, and it was the equivalent of what we call The Whole Truth paper. Every church has a paper. In that particular group, the Zion group, it was called the Zion Star. And he published that for their group. And it went everywhere. There was also this thing, he was an educator. He got his degrees from Morehouse and… Brainerd. He had gotten his education through those institutions and he encouraged all the preachers to go to school and educate yourself.
I can see the difference between his ministry and C. H. Mason’s ministry in that Mason had the philosophy we’ll put a church on every corner. Well, D. J.’s ministry, or preferences, were, lets have one in each town. We can build up one to be a large church, self sustaining. Now that influence came from the AME Church or the Methodist movement. As they would go different places and establish a church, that would be the church for the area and if it grew that was because the population grew. Here in the city, we have two or three Methodist churches. At one time, there was only one. And so this was the difference in the philosophy of D. J. and Mason. I kinda like the idea of having them on every corner, in one sense. If D. J. had become the head of the church that would’ve been a thing very noted, one church in Kansas City, Kansas, one church in Kansas City, Missouri, one church in Topeka, one church here and there and elsewhere. And still, it’s good to let the churches grow. Sometimes a little competition is good.
Now, during this time frame, by him being a writer, when he came to the Church of God in Christ, he just automatically started writing, and they didn’t have a paper, so he started The Whole Truth paper. He was the first editor. He sat down and he received articles from all over the brotherhood of what was going on here and there and elsewhere. By putting it in the paper and sending it throughout the country, everybody got to share in it. With his knowledge of printing, and his degree, and his past associations, he knew that we needed a Sunday School. And he pushed, ‘let’s have a Sunday School.’ Well they didn’t have any literature so he became the one, ‘let’s get the literature together.’ So, he got the literature going.
He did not write the literature, per se. He edited it. What happened is he got his information from the international church Sunday school lessons, and then would edit it so that it would fit the doctrine of the Church of God in Christ, which is a tremendous job right there because when you have to go through every word of an article to make sure it agrees with the whole discipline, that’s quite a bit of work right there, but it was also helpful because with a dozen or so other writers helping you to put an article together or paper together, you can get poems or songs or other inspirations. Yet, I do know that we sometimes get the inspiration and we can write a message and put dozens of songs in and several poems, and what have you, as God should give us grace, but then if you have to sit down and do that for every Sunday, its good sometimes if somebody can help you just a little bit, so God gave him the help. He just adopted the international lessons for the Sunday School literature and edited it to fit the doctrine of the Church of God in Christ. It worked out pretty good.
Ladrian Brown: And the Sunday School literature was produced in 1916?
Pastor Young: Yes, he started publishing it here at his house, 1958 North 6th Street. And it was sent to the various locations from there for years.
Sister Brown: And who did the printing?
Pastor Young: At that time it was a white printer. The guy’s name was Lucas. And he printed the materials and would bring the books to the house. And they would be mailed from there. They had already been edited. Now, the printing of the literature was AFTER it was edited. They fell into various categories. You had your card class material, your primary, intermediate, your junior, and your seniors, etc. Each one of those had been written so that it could appeal and make it easier for each age group to understand. It made it quite effective.
D. J. did die but his primary helper was his wife, and she was helping him all along, from the get go, as they would say. When he died she just kept the work going, and her kids Harold, Melvin, Rose, Valleda, and Russell.
Sister Brown: And Ceolya?
Pastor Young: No, Ceolya was the baby girl and she didn’t really get into the writing. She was born just before they came here from Texas. The church here in Kansas was established in ’16, and so they had just got here. She was a toddler at best. The most I remember about Ceolya, or Aunt Ceolya, was that my Grandpa would come in, he would take his coat off and hang it on the back of his chair, or either he would be sitting at the chair and he would always keep gum drops, lemon gum drops, in his pocket. She would go and take the gum drops and then give the other kids some. She could always get away with it so they all had gum drops through Ceolya, the baby girl. She was just a little bit, too young to do any of the editing.
Now all the grandkids were used in the delivery of the Sunday School books. The oldest, the ones that were saved, sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost, and life proven, steps proved, were allowed to help with some editing as they aged and got into their late twenties, mid twenties or thereabout, but then all the kids, including myself, we learned how to go and wrap the books up and tie the books up in a package and put on a label, put the glue on the back of the label and stick the label on the package. After we got finished we had to separate all these different packages by states, go to the Post Office department, and bag it up and take it up to the Post Office for them and so the youngest grandchild could be only three, or four or five years old, and they would take that batch over there and put it in that pile... And that’s how it was done, so we all had a play in getting some of the work out. I’ll say it was all complimentary.
Thank you. Thank you was what you got paid. It was fun. The publishing house had just been completed as a new building the year that she [Madame Priscilla Young] died. Now how long it had been actually standing there, cause she was sick for quite a while before she went into the hospital, I’m not really sure. But it was very interesting. Here we had a building that could handle a lot of space and support the equipment that would be needed but we were not trained as printers. The task fell to the old folks as they said then, Dad, Aunt Rose… You gotta get some printing material to print these books. So they went to a number of establishments that sold printing equipment and they would go in and say this is what we want to do. Because this was a time when, well, there were not many rich black folks around and when they went to these places, they were very often snubbed. They just treated them like they were not even there and if they talked to them at all they would talk down to them. But then they went to one place and this man, the salesman, was extremely polite. Here were three or four people that wanted to print a book and he told them how it could be done and what they needed to get it done. And the idea of printing it themselves, or her printing it, came into being because one of her son-in-laws said Momma, you’ve got some sons, grandsons, and they’ll be needing a job, and if you built a place you could hire them and train them and they’ll always have a job and you would always have somebody to get your work out. That’s the way it came into the building. Incidentally, Uncle Melvin was a carpenter by trade and he’s the one they contracted to build the building.
Sister Brown: And who was Uncle Melvin to D. J.?
Pastor Young: That’s his son, the second child of D. J., second oldest child.
Sister Brown: What role did he play in the publishing house and his other children as well?
Pastor Young: Melvin, that’s Uncle Melvin, was also an editor and he was a preacher. And Harold was a preacher. They pastored the churches after their Dad died, Grandpa died. They had to do some of everything. When you’re the boss, it doesn’t mean you just sit and direct, it means that you just get in there and get it done. They would do everything that had to be done including sweep the floor if it was necessary. They would fill books, fill orders as they would say, and wrap, and tie, and ship the mail.
The logic was that, and this was a phrase that was often used, “the rich Youngs,” but people didn’t know that we weren’t rich. You know, when you work for yourself you don’t always get rich. But to do what had to be done you had to take the money and invest it. When Mr. Lucas was printing the Sunday School books, she didn’t spend all her money and just throw it away but then she handled it very wisely, Mother D. J. Young, Big Mama. She handled her money very wisely. When the time came, she had put money away to buy the presses, the cutters, the trimmers, the folders, the stitchers, and all that stuff that needed to be had to put a book together. And this gentleman that was so very kind to inform her of what she needed was the one who got the contract. As the Lord would have it, she bought the presses and what not. This was good equipment - very, very good equipment. She bought the equipment and she paid cash for it. Suddenly, every man that had a business was running to do business cause they thought we had some money, but before, they had down-played her, or the family, because she was black. So there was no lot of money, but it was just spent wisely. Very often the kids would go do publishing and get the books out. When we were little, ten, fifteen years old, you’re running around wrapping the books, you’d be working hard, but your treat at the end of the week was probably going to be a dime, and a dime wasn’t very much then and it’s still not. But you were glad to get the dime because you were a youngster. Some of the older ones, they didn’t get paid at all. This was just your job. You had to do it, just like cleaning the house. You had to clean, everybody cleans.
J. O. Patterson came in… I have Sunday School literature that was printed in 1973. Bishop Jones had come from the national and asked them would they give the equipment to the church. It was an absolute no. The reason for it is because every year the publishing shop, or every quarter, made a report like all the other auxiliaries of the church. YPWW, Sunday School department, you name it, they reported to the national work. Well the Sunday School literature department, it made its reports also. I don’t know why they thought the Young’s were rich, but that attitude carried through.
Sister Brown: Thank you Pastor Young for sharing with us. Now as we wrap up, what is your take on the publishing house…, the significance of the D. J. Young Publishing Company in relation to the Church of God in Christ and also in Kansas City, and last of all, to the Young family?
Pastor Young: It hurt me to see the printing shop close down. I offered to run the shop as a job printing. Which meant all the big presses would no longer be of any great value… The big presses would print a page as large as the average newspaper when you take the full sheets, which is also the back page. This was the size of the books as they went through there. They would print on both sides, and then the folder would fold it in such a way until it would come out to the small size, of like nine by six, I think it was. We had to have something to do with that equipment. In one sense it was the demise of the old folks, meaning Aunt Rose, Uncle Melvin, Russell lived in California so he wasn’t totally affected, but those that lived here… when you get in the habit of going to work every day and sometimes you got your full check paid and sometimes you didn’t… What you didn’t get this week, wasn’t going to come next week. It was just short and you had to bear with it. As the kids grew older, they started accepting jobs outside of the publishing house. So you had some that started teaching school, and such like. In the evening, after they went to their regular job, they would come over to the printing shop and do their job there. So it had a dampening effect. It killed people’s ego. Some of the children that weren’t saved, I don’t doubt that they had a bad image in their mind about what had transpired. You’ve been taught this game, even though you’re not saved, you’ve been taught Biblically all your life, and one of the things you do is you treat others as you want to be treated. Then when you see this happen and your basic livelihood is just taken, totally disregarded, your feelings…, it had a bad affect on them. It did have an affect on them.
With Aunt Rose and Uncle Melvin, I know that in one sense they felt a relief, but by the same token, if you have nothing to do, you die. Now that’s a proven fact. People retire, and they go home and sit down thinking they’re going to enjoy it and soon they dwindle away to nothing. This was the same effect here at the printing shop. The old folks said hey, suddenly I have no place to go, I’m not wanted. Re-establishing yourself when you’re seventy years old, it’s more than a notion. And then the community here suddenly is without. Where they had been able to come in and leave something to be printed and come back and get it and have it exactly as they wanted it. With the printing, the printer’s union has a saying ‘follow copy out the window.’ This is your copy, this is the way they want it, so you give it to them just like they say they want it. If it’s necessary to proof it two or three times, let them come and examine it and edit it and make sure, then this is fine, but you’re giving them exactly what they want. And for these people who had been getting exactly whatever they wanted done and suddenly it’s not there anymore, it hurt the community. It had a disastrous effect.
‘Now take this shop here and ship it to Memphis.’ Well, suddenly Memphis has a new shop but then you don’t have anyone who knows what’s going on, the internal workings of the shop that made it move. Now you have to take a new crew, and teach them. It’s more to it than just collecting a dollar. When the printing shop was functioning under D. J. Young Publishing, the overseas churches received their Sunday School literature without charge. They went to Africa, and wherever else. I do not know if the national considered or continued that policy. I can’t answer that.
It was a need and we were going to provide for this need. Bishop Mason told them, don’t worry about it, I know what you all are doing, and you’re making your reports and you’re helping the church, so just go ahead on. But that only lasted a certain length of time and gradually it became the old game of ‘he got too much, give me some.’ And that’s not being fair to the person who’s doing it, nor really even to the person who wants it. There were individuals who represented the church that were demanding, and where there influence went, we did not know. They would call and say this is what we want, give it to us or we’ll take it, and they did. If they say they’re representing the church but Bishop Mason was saying something different… so the head of the church is not condoning what they are doing, and eventually it went like they, rather than what Bishop Mason, was saying.
*Edited and Transcribed by Ladrian P. Brown, MD
*Editorial Assistant - Eliana Williams
*Video recording by Elder Jerry Ramsey